Security Intelligence Far East
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Security Intelligence Far East (SIFE) was a British intelligence organization created in 1946 as the Far Eastern regional headquarters of the Security Service, MI5. It was based in British-controlled Singapore and established by Colonel Cyril Egerton Dixon, a career MI5 officer with a great deal of war time counter intelligence experience in Britain and India.[1][2][3][4] SIFE (like SIME) was also a MI5 controlled organisation, which partially merged its counterintelligence section with the regional headquarters of MI6 in 1950.[5][6] SIFE controlled a number of MI5 Defence Security Officers (from 1949, named Security Liaison Officers) in Singapore, Kuala Lumpur, Malaya and across the Far East.[7][8]
SIFE was headquartered in Phoenix Park, Singapore which was also where the headquarters of British Commission-General for Southeast Asia Malcolm MacDonald’s headquarters were located.[9]
SIFE’s primary objective was to collect, collate, and assess intelligence produced by intelligence agencies in the Far East, such as the Malayan Secret Service (MSS) in Malaya and Singapore and the British Special Branches in Hong Kong and Burma.[10] Unlike the MSS, SIFE did not run any agents on the ground. Whereas SIFE’s Charter allowed it to run intelligence operations across British territories across the Far East, the MSS’s Charter limited it to Malaya and Singapore.